Third World Forum for Lifelong Learning
I have recently returned from a flying visit to Morocco, to attend the Third World Forum on Lifelong Learning. My role was to lead a symposium on Women and Girls’ Literacy, and the role of family literacy. I began with the horrifying and startling statistics about women’s literacy and girl’s access to education – that 54% of uneducated children are girls, 64% of illiterate adults are women, and that UNESCO has estimated that 860 million adults will still not have access to literacy by 2015. Even to this audience – African and European in the main – these numbers came as a shock. Unsurprisingly, those giving supporting evidence at the event listed the reasons for women’s lack of access to literacy as being War, Poverty and Religion.
I talked in detail about the impact, research and importance of Family Literacy – and the links it has to policy areas such as health, employability, financial capability and the impact on intergenerational literacy. This drew descriptions from the audience of work in South Africa and Morocco, with immigrants in Paris and with families in East Africa and Italy. The ensuing discussion, in French and English, highlighted the central role of the family and the importance of funding development programmes with explicit outcomes ones that build on the skills of the families and that locate literacy and numeracy in a context, be that a parenting, cultural or vocational context. Adama Ouane, Minister of Education in Mali, challenged the view that family literacy and intergenerational learning is a concept of the North by quoting from Family Literacy: Experiences from Africa and around the world (Desmond, S and Elfert, M 2008), “…intergenerational learning is rooted in many cultures and exists everywhere in the world, in the North as well as in the South.”
The event was packed with fascinating presentations like Aminata Diallo Boly’s, an Education Programme Officer for the Andal & Pinal, who described a programme with nomad herders in Burkina Faso – L’Ecole du Berger et de la Bergere – that worked intensively with children who hadn’t accessed education, in the few months when the nomads remain static with their animals. Abdeljalil Slayssi, Representative for the Children House Association, was interviewed about his association’s work for orphans and how education can help those children. Carolyn Medel Anonuevo, Deputy Director of UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, ended the session by outlining how important education is for the health of women and their families and how we can help improve people’s health conditions through education.
The event made me very aware that in the UK we are sitting on evidence, programmes, resources and ideas that we need to share internationally. The role of the family as the first and most central site for learning is common for all families wherever they are and in whatever circumstances they live. We need to do this not least to support Morocco’s strategy for lifelong learning currently in development, to take further Burkina Faso’s NGO-funded programme and to help Naples University with its developments to reinforce the importance of the family in their primary teacher training.
This is all food for thought for our Women’s Right to Literacy conference, coming up in London on 6 December.
Co-written by Audrey A. Da Silva – an intern for NIACE’s Research and Development Department, who has recently finished a Masters Degree in Economic Development in France.
